Discovery
by Kakawot
Summary: The first night after Ed gets his automail, he explores it with his flesh hand. Well, not the first night – the first night he's actually coherent.


It's the first night he's actually coherent. The pain is there, but the pain medication is playing keep-away with it. Which suits him just fine, because from the moment they connected the automail he's been in agony. Nerves are fickle things.

He's already familiar with phantom limb pain, but now that he has his limbs back his nervous system is not satisfied yet. That moment will only come when he once again possesses his own limbs, and Alphonse his whole body.

Though the 'limbs' don't feel like part of him yet. He can barely move the heavy metal without his nerve endings screaming at him that something is rubbing them raw. He's seen the insides of the automail, has seen the golden threads which connect the tiny white dots inside his flesh to the cables and pulleys and all of the _metal_ now attached to his body.

The night is dark as no moon is visible and out here in the country there is such little electric light that even the starshine is stronger than whatever street lamps there are. His eyes are adjusted to the dark, but even so it's hard to make out any shapes. He _knows_ that there has to be a large shape hunkered at the far end of the room. If his brother knows that Ed's awake, he shows no sign of it.

Slowly, without moving the shoulder where there is now a metal limb attached, he reaches over with his flesh hand and runs a finger across the metal one. Only his flesh reports any sort of sense of touch back, and he knows it's going to be hard to train his nerves into reporting back any sort of information from the metal. The nerves intertwined into the automail can move the arm, but the golden threads can't send back pain or heat or the feeling of goosebumps. It's going to be hell to know where the arm is in the first place, same with the leg. It'll be like holding a baseball bat and swinging it around without knowing how gravity is going to affect it.

While keeping the metal limb still Ed dips one finger into the joint and encounters cables, along with the cold metal pressing against his warm flesh. He runs a hand across the elbow joint and finds edges and ridges and things which do _not belong on an arm_.

Ed, his temper making him do stupid things as always, thumps with his free hand on the metal limb and gasps as this time the automail does send signals up his nervous system and shooting into his brain. In an automatic response his new fingers curl inward and the sudden, unexpected sensation is joined by the familiar pain of raw nerves connecting to man-made threads without having healed up. No pain medication is ready for the likes of Edward Elric, so he tenses up in pain and breathes through it, trying not to alert Al.

Finally his stupid nerves decide to stop screaming at him for the mistake and the feeling of dipping his shoulder into molten lava disappears. He breathes for a minute more, laying absolutely still. He barely dares to blink, but when he determines that his raw nerves are no longer trying to connect to the automail does he dare resume his discovery.

Maybe it's better that he can't see very well. His eyes have roved across the metal enough times when it was laid out on Winry's work bench. If he has to touch things, hold things and squeeze things with this limb, he'd better map it thoroughly.

So he starts off at the shoulder. The gap between healing flesh and automail is an abrupt one. The metal has taken on the ambient temperature of the room, and since it's night, it's _cold_. The cold radiates outward and in the future he'll have to do something about that. Right now, he tries to skip past that.

Far softer than before he thumps against the metal, thrumming the fingers he's able to move without debilitating pain against the man-made arm. Now that he's prepared for the sensation it's easier to categorize. It's… something his brain has trouble translating into a sense. It's not _touch_ , it's not the feeling of skin against metal, it's not a heat transfer getting translated into pangs of _something_. Ed continues further down the arm, tapping out a signal with two fingers. The further removed from the shoulder, the harder he has to tap to experience the same sensation. Until he gets to the fingers. Those are sensitive to the slightest of tremors.

Vibration. That's it. The automail can pick up vibrations and pass it on to the human nerves. Since there are so many golden threads buried inside the fingers, it has a faster connection up to the shoulder than, say, the underside of his arm. It's far less important to feel vibrations there, since he has to use his fingers for delicate work, like holding a chalk stick and writing down formulas.

Fascinated by this discovery Ed keeps on working his fingers across the metal, tapping and slapping and reveling in whatever sensations get passed on. He scrapes fingernails across the blunt edges of his upper arms, which produces nothing. But he begins to form a mental image of what the limb looks like. Well, he knows what it _looks_ like. Now, he knows what it _feels_ like inside his mind. It'll be a while before he'll be able to move it without pain killers taking off the edge, but with this small discovery it no longer feels like he's wielding a baseball bat. It's an _arm_ and it belongs to him now.

The way his fingers glide across the cables and the knowledge that he can dip his pinky finger all the way in his elbow joint is still unsettling, but not horrifying. It means that, in time, he knows every weak spot. He'll have to know the limit of his new limbs. How far can his wrist bend? How fast can he make a fist? Will he be able to balance on the balls of his feet?

When his flesh hands reach his metal fingers he hesitates. He takes the blunt forefinger between much weaker thumb and forefinger and bents it towards his open palm. Right. Agony whenever he tries to move, how could he forget about that? But the movement is so small that his raw nerves have mercy on him and release him from the chilling grip of pain quite fast.

Ed goes back over the moment he moved the finger. Something sparked inside his shoulder, something which immediately called up pain, but it was a different feeling from tapping on the metal. It was like he was telling his brain to move the finger. If he can repeat the motion, the signal will be even stronger. Given enough repetitions, he'll be able to isolate that command from the jumble of feelings the golden threads were sending up and he can then finally move his finger on command.

One year, he'd given himself. This is the first night he's coherent, Al is keeping quiet in the dark and Ed is determined. He's mapped out his arm, he can see the limb in front of his mind's eye. With all of his willpower he focuses on his forefinger as he moves it again. Towards the palm, away from the palm.

Sweat breaks out across his back and his mind is swimming with pain, but he bites his cheek and repeats the motion.

In the moonless night he's made his new limbs his own. The way the metal reflects the smallest of light sources might be wrong, it's all he's got right now. If Al can live with _being_ metal, Ed can live with being part metal. At least he can still feel the goosebumps on his other arm.

One year, and then he's going to make sure that Al never again has to sit in a dark, quiet bedroom without the ability to sleep, staring at his brother who's forcing himself to bend a single finger over and over.

It's the first coherent night of many.


End file.
